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(Sponsor: Illinois Northern Chapter)
WHEREAS, the American College of Physicians (ACP) recognizes the need to ensure that everyone in the United States has access to needed health care services of high quality; and
WHEREAS, the ACP has recommended that the public and policymakers consider adopting a single-payer financing model as a means of achieving universal coverage, because single-payer systems are equitable and achieve high levels of patient satisfaction and high measures of quality and access with lower administrative costs compared to multi-payer systems; and
WHEREAS, the Affordable Care Act, while laudable in many aspects, leaves 35 million U.S. residents uninsured and its multi payer system fails to provide equal access to care for the poor specifically the poor in states that have refused to expand Medicaid and for eleven million non-citizen residents across the United States; and
WHEREAS, Medicaid expansion, a key Affordable Care Act strategy for covering the poorest of the uninsured will leave 62% of poor African Americans and 50% of poor whites without insurance because the states they live in did not expand Medicaid; and
WHEREAS, the Health Care Marketplaces offer multi-payer private insurance coverage with unacceptably high deductibles and co-pays for low-income people; and
WHEREAS, there are also many non-citizen U.S. residents who are ineligible for Medicaid or Marketplace subsidies; and
WHEREAS, an expanded Medicare, a single-payer system with the above characteristics is most consistent with ACP's goal of promoting the highest clinical standards, ethical ideals and access to care; and
WHEREAS, an expanded Medicare, single-payer system would be the most elegant way to expand health care coverage across the United States to those currently excluded from the benefits of the Affordable Care Act; therefore be it
RESOLVED, that the Board of Regents supports the promotion of an expanded Medicare single-payer health insurance system in the United States as a means to provide insurance coverage to those uninsured currently ineligible for benefits under the Affordable Care Act.